Cubans turn to Telegram, WhatsApp and other internet services as illegal online markets flourish
- Group messaging has become one popular avenue for people to find goods unavailable in stores as internet usage booms on the communist-governed island
- President Miguel Diaz-Canel has called for a crackdown on revendedores, or resellers, referring to them as ‘criminals’ and ‘swindlers’
In the Telegram group chat, the messages roll in like waves.
“I need liquid ibuprofen and acetaminophen, please,” wrote one user. “It’s urgent, it’s for my 10-month-old baby.”
Others offer medicine brought from outside of Cuba, adding, “Write to me in a direct message.” Emoji-speckled lists offer antibiotics, pregnancy tests, vitamins, rash creams and more.
The group message, which includes 170,000 people, is just one of many that have flourished in recent years in Cuba alongside an exponential increase in internet usage on the communist-governed island.
The informal sale of everything from eggs to car parts – the country’s so-called black market – is a time-honoured practice in crisis-stricken Cuba, where access to the most basic items such as milk, chicken, medicine and cleaning products has always been limited. The market is technically illegal, but the extent of illegality, in official eyes, can vary by the sort of items sold and how they were obtained.
Before the internet, such exchanges took place “through your contacts, your neighbours, your local community”, said Ricardo Torres, a Cuban and economics fellow at American University in Washington. “But now, through the internet, you get to reach out to an entire province.”